


You Can Make a Change

by R5h



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Platonic Relationships, Post-Episode: s06e19 I Am My Monster, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Episode: s06e20 The Future, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23452138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R5h/pseuds/R5h
Summary: “So,” Spinel said, staring at him. “You turned into a giant monster. Let's talk about that.”Exhausted and depowered after his corruption, Steven wakes up in the hospital to find his new best friend waiting for him.
Comments: 32
Kudos: 188





	You Can Make a Change

Nothing was beautiful and everything hurt.

The humming above Steven’s head was insistent, boring into his skull second after second. Off to his left was this strange repetitive beep, like a digital heartbeat. Something was pinching into the crook of his elbow. The air smelled like the absence of smell, and this bed beneath him—it wasn’t his.

His eyes opened, blinking and groaning against white light, as he tried to get a sense of what was going on. From the vague colors he could see through tired eyes, this wasn't the beach house, or the van, or anywhere familiar. Why wasn't he somewhere familiar? What had happened—

_A flash of memory—transforming, bursting out of himself, wrecking his body, wrecking his house—all physical sensations disappearing, a soundless shriek filling his ears—_

“You're _awake!_ ”

The voice—more excited than tired, but still impossibly tired—brought him back to the present with a jolt. By the time he could see clearly, a head popped into view: pink, with big messy pigtails. She had dark tear trails even now, smiling as wide as she was. “Golly, Steven, you were out _forever!_ ”

“Spinel,” Steven said, once his brain put the pieces together. Everything was sorta... blurry at the moment, not just his eyes. “Hi.”

“Hi to you too, buddy.”

Spinel's head retracted like her neck was fishing line being reeled in, returning to a body that was sitting in the corner of… wherever this was. She bounded off her chair with a squeak of her shoes, tossing aside a battered copy of _Anatomy for People Who Are 100% Human._ “Is this place cool or what? I'm thinking we should get a couple for Homeworld!”

Steven looked around. He'd never been in this room before, but it seemed familiar the more his eyes adjusted. “Where am I?”

“Well, after you passed out in the ocean, your _lady friend_ —” Spinel made her eyes go heart-shaped “—said you needed to go to some kind of human restoration facility? I wasn't sold at first, but those _‘doctors’_ , they were real careful with ya. And they gave me balloons!”

Right, that made sense. This place looked a lot like the hospital where he'd had that disastrous checkup with Dr. Maheswaran. It was plain: door, window, few chairs. Bed. And what was that about balloons?

He looked over to his left and saw, bobbing above his headboard, a half dozen inflated latex gloves. They weren't the only things to his left, either. “What are those?”

“Oh, I can tell you! I've been learning _aaaaall_ kinds of cool things about this place!” Spinel pranced toward the side of his bed, and started jiggling the machines standing next to him. “Like, _this_ doodad sticking into your elbow is putting weird human juices inside you to help you live! And _this_ beepy gizmo that's hooked up to your finger is called a heart monitor!”

She frowned. “Though honestly, I've been reading one of their science books, and that thingy inside your chest doesn't look anything _like_ a heart!” She grabbed her own gem for emphasis, stretching her skin to show it to Steven. “Yours is all lumpy and tubey and stuff! They should really call it something else, it’s super confusing.”

Steven laughed, more for Spinel’s sake. “Spinel,” he said, “how long was I asleep?”

“Hey, who can say?” Spinel batted her hand. “Pssh, I didn't even count the seconds or anything! So get this, there's this juice in the cafe that Pearl won't let me try, it's called _coffee—_ ”

“ _Spinel_.”

Her grin came out a lot less enthusiastic, a lot more tired. “Oh, you know, not _long_. Just three Earth days. That's like, what, five minutes in gem years?”

“ _Three days?_ ” Steven convulsed like the words were a gallon of freezing water, splashed over his body. “I was out for—everybody must be worried _sick_ —where _are_ they? I need to—”

Before he could sit up, Spinel's hands were there, gently shoving him back into bed. “You _need_ to lie down, Steverino. Everyone else is just downstairs. Well, not the Diamonds, they don't fit in the waiting room—but we've been taking shifts keeping an eye on ya, so no one's even getting tired out! So don't worry about us.”

Steven panted. His eyes were unfocusing, and something was ringing in his ears.

Spinel hesitated. “Hey, do you want me to go get 'em? We could make it a party! A big ol' 'Steven Universe is all better' party!” She jumped around, pirouetting and floating as if on wires. “I could get you ticker tape, and a brass band, and more of these novelty balloons with the pokey-outey bits on the side, and everyone you know all crowding around you—”

Moments were flooding in. Steven couldn't process them. Shouting at his family in his house—White Diamond—being restrained in the ocean—everyone coming toward him—but the memories were a laser in his eyes, a burst of static in his ears. “ _I am not all better!_ ” he yelled, shielding himself with his arms.

At length, he felt a hand holding his own. He focused on the hand, and once he'd done that for long enough to center himself, he opened his eyes.

He wasn't glowing pink. Somehow. Maybe he'd burned up all that power for a while, what with turning into a—in any case, Spinel stood at the foot of the bed, mid-pirouette. Her pigtails sagged below her shoulders. “This isn't working,” she said. “Is it.”

“Spinel,” he said, “I am so, _so_ sorry you had to see that. I just—I've been losing control lately, but that doesn't mean—”

“No, no. They weren't great jokes.” Spinel’s voice had lost its usual manic edge. “I mean, why would I not know what gloves are? I _wear_ gloves.” She held up a hand and wriggled her fingers.

“It's not that the joke wasn't funny—”

“Yeah, I know.” She sidled around his bed and crouched down to his eye level. “Sorry, Steven. Guess we should get to brasstacks.”

Steven winced.

She threw her arms backward, grabbing the chair from across the room and pulling it to her. “So,” she said, staring at him. “You turned into a giant monster. Let's talk about that.”

Static was building in his ears again. His vision was going pink, even if his body wasn't. “No.” Steven shook his head, and sat up a bit, rising above her. “You don't need to feel bad, Spinel.”

“Steven, stop,” she chuckled, her mouth growing into a grin.

“I'm serious.” The words dropped from his lips automatically. “You were doing your best, and your heart was in the right place—”

“My heart's _never_ in the right place, c'mon, _look_ at it—”

“And what matters is that you can do better next time, and grow and change, and—”

Her index finger slapped so hard against his lips that it stung. “Steven,” she said, teeth bared with strain, “this is _you_ time, not ‘poor little Spinel’ time, got it?” She shook her head emphatically. “So stop trying to help me before I give in and _let_ you, cuz fixing _my_ problems ain't what you need either.”

Steven stared at her. The longer he stared, the angrier he felt. “How do _you_ know what I need?” he said, his voice growing. He only hoped it wouldn’t shatter the window. “ _I_ don't know what I need!”

“You need to get better, _doy!_ Doesn't take a genius to figure that out!”

“ _I'VE TRIED!_ ”

Spinel flinched back, as if the force of his voice had physically forced her. Maybe it had. It was so hard to tell right now.

“I've been _trying to fix this_ for _weeks._ ” He heaved breaths. “ _Months_ , even! I tried talking to _everyone I knew_ , and they just let me down. _You_ let me down!” He slammed his fists on the mattress. “I came to you on Homeworld, I needed help, and you—you _sang_ at me?”

“Worked last time,” Spinel mumbled.

“And even if you didn't all let me down, _even if_ I could trust you, it doesn't matter because _I can't trust myself!_ ” His eyes squeezed shut, forcing tears out. “How am I supposed to get better if I can't even do that?”

His fingers dug into the sheets, making big burls in his fists. “I'm _scared_ , Spinel. I'm scared that this is going to happen again, that I'm gonna get a little better and then it'll all go wrong and I'll just corrupt again and again, and maybe one of those times, no one comes to give me a hug. Maybe one of those times I don't change back.” He opened his eyes and looked at her through tears. “I'm lost and I'm scared and _I don't know what to do._ ”

Spinel just stared at him. She was still leaned back in her seat, the same as when he'd started shouting. “Oh, no,” he said. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to shout, I swear, I'm so stupid—”

“Well, I'll tell you the first thing you need to do.” She leaned in again and tapped him twice on the lips. “ _Not that._ ”

“Not... what?”

“The whole guilt routine. Totally unhelpful. I see it all the time back on Homeworld.” She stood up, holding one palm out. “Like, let's say there's this gem. I dunno, call her something totally random, like _Schminel_. Let's say she's feeling a little down because she did a _bad thing_. She can't stop _dwelling_ on the bad thing.”

The palm closed into a fist, and the fist shook. “It's all she thinks about. She dwells so hard on it that she loses control, or needs to vent, who knows? It's all a blur. And _blammo!_ ”

Her fist shot out and _almost_ smashed into the wall, several feet away.

Spinel was panting. “Guess what? _Schminel_ just smashed something important. Like a pillar, or a wall, or a _Diamond_. That's another _bad thing_ to add onto the pile. Another thing to _dwell_ on, and on and on it goes, and the party don't stop.” Instead of retracting her arm, she coiled it in on itself and let it stretch toward the floor—a literal downward spiral.

She leaned toward him. “Don't let the party start in the first place, ya hear me? Make amends or whatever, but don't go beating yourself up. Trust me, you can wallop yourself pretty hard.”

“Hang on.” Steven blinked, latching onto her words partway through. “Spinel, you've been getting in fights with the Diamonds?”

“Holy moly! You saw through my cunning ruse!” She grinned at him, her arm retracting to a normal length. “You're a pretty smart guy.”

“I thought you were all happy together! You seemed to love them when I visited!”

“Okay, maybe not _that_ smart.” Spinel rolled her eyes and sat back down. “Steve-o, they were the three most brutal dictators in the universe. Didja think it was gonna be sunshine and rainbows all the time?”

“But—they've _changed_ since then—”

“What, and your friends haven't?”

 _That_ shut him up.

Spinel sighed, rocking back and forth in her chair. “I know they hurt a lot of people. You, your mom, everyone? They ain’t perfect—but they’re trying to be better, same as me, and there’s a lotta love there. If I waited for perfect people to make me all better—well, I already tried waiting for a 'perfect person'. Once.”

Her expression darkened, and she pushed back with her feet, and teetered for a moment—then she pinwheeled her arms, bringing her back into balance. “Where was I?” she said, eyes widening again. “Something about, like, your friends are tryin' and they only want the best for you, and yadda yadda yadda. You see what I'm getting at here, with the parallelism and the similar life experiences and such? Work with me.”

Nothing, Steven reflected, was quite as infuriating as someone trying to compare _similar life experiences_. “I already told you, it _doesn't matter!_ The problem isn't that I can't trust them, it's that I can't trust _me_ —”

Spinel _laughed._

She laughed so hard she overbalanced outright, slamming back onto the floor. “Steven!” she said between gasps, rolling from side to side. “I didn't know you were a galactic hero _and_ a comedian!”

“Spinel, _what_?”

“You think _I_ trust me?”

Still shaking with laughter, Spinel pushed herself and her seat back to vertical. “I mean, come on,” she said, wiping her eye, “were ya totally checked out when I said that spiel earlier, about the guilt spirals and the smashing and so forth? I wouldn't trust me as far as I could _throw_ me!”

She frowned. “Which is a bad example, because I can throw myself pretty far. But you get the picture.”

“So—so what, you aren't better at all? There's no hope?” Steven's voice broke on that last sentence.

“Now who said a thing like that?” Spinel smiled. “I'm getting to _know_ me, is the big thing. There's a lotta new stuff to know—I changed real quickly, real _fast_ —but I'm learning how I tick, day by day. How to calm myself down. What triggers to avoid. That sorta thing. I think I'll earn my trust back one day soon, but no rush.”

“No rush.” Now _that_ was funny—not _funny ha-ha_ , though, even though he chuckled.

Spinel leaned forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “Steven, I'm gonna level with ya.” She stared him right in the face. “One day, you might turn into a giant monster again—” his ears blasted static, his vision flashed “— _and that's okay._ ”

He blinked, all his senses clearing. “How can it be okay?”

“Because recovery ain't a straight shot, buddy.” She stretched her other arm out and up, and then contorted it—all jagged angles. “There's highs and lows, and yeah, sometimes there's relapses. And it _stinks_. But that doesn't mean you're not making progress.”

She retracted that arm so that she could put her other hand on his shoulder. “So screw up as many times as you need to. I mean, don't go out of your _way_ or nothin', but if it happens, it happens. We'll be there to help you out, every time.”

He stared at her—at the smile of someone who really _got it_ —and his chest tightened. His throat burned, and he shook, and he looked around in a panic—was this his power coming back? Was he going pink again?

But Spinel was there, reaching around him. “Hey, it's okay, you're okay. There there.” Her arms curled around him three, four, five times, leaving him in a cocoon of a hug. “You're gonna be all right, Steven, no matter how long it takes.”

And Steven felt the tears on his cheeks, and when Spinel leaned closer to him, he was grateful because it meant he could hug her back like he wasn't ever gonna let go. As he shook, and as he sobbed, she sang into his ear:

 _You can make it different, you can make it right_...

It wasn't a showtune. Spinel sang the song as a lullaby, slowly and sweetly, and Steven just hugged her tightly and let the tears flow.

It made him feel human.

After a minute, maybe more, Steven was able to speak. “I'm still scared,” he managed, his voice clumsy and wet. “I know I have to try to get better, but... there's _so much_ to fix.”

“Not like you’ve got anything more important to do. The thing about getting better is, you get better at it.” She gave him a squeeze. “Just take it one step at a time.”

“Right. One step at a time.” He opened his eyes and let out a breath. “I can do that.” He pulled away from the hug enough to smile at her. “You know, you're pretty smart, Spinel.”

“I had a good life coach.” Her smile back was twice as wide as his.

Spinel blinked. All at once, her arms unwrapped themselves from him, and she stood. “All right, I'd say that's about as much time as I can get away with.”

“Spinel?” Steven said.

He tried to sit up, but she smiled and shook her head. “Hey, I of all gems should know better than to try to monopolize you, right?” She smiled and raised her hand to her lips, and—like he'd seen several times before—her pinky spiraled outward until she had a megaphone. Steven made sure to cover his ears before the sound blasted out:

“ _Attention, all friends, family, and care team members of Steven Quartz Cutie-Pie DeMayo Diamond Universe—wowie, that's a mouthful! Ladies and germs, the boy's awake!_ ”

She grinned, pushing her chair back into the corner of the room and sitting down. “Word of warning, Steverino? It might get a bit crowded in here.” And now that she mentioned it, as the echoes from her announcement reverberated into nothing, a new sound was growing. It sounded like something between a stampede and an earthquake, and it was getting closer.

He sat up, just in time for the door to burst open and the window to shatter. “ _Steven!_ ” cried a dozen voices, and a flood of people poured into the room. Connie. Greg. Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl. Peridot, Lapis, and Bismuth a little further back. The Diamonds, through the window. He even thought he saw Jasper, but she was gone before he could be sure.

“Steven!” Dad had deep bags under his eyes, and he clasped Steven's hand. “I woke up as soon as I heard. Are you all right?”

“You were asleep?” Steven winced. “Sorry to—”

A pink gloved hand extended above the throng, index finger swaying pointedly from side to side, before the hand sprang back down.

Steven shook himself, and smiled. “ _Thanks_ for coming to see me, everyone.”

Everyone beamed.

And then, behind them, striding into the room—Dr. Maheswaran. “All right, yes, I know we're all very excited to see him, but _he's been unconscious for three days so please let an actual doctor take a look!_ ” With some difficulty, she pushed her way through the crowd, human and otherwise, until she was at Steven's bedside. “Welcome back, Steven,” she said with her own warm smile. “How are you feeling?”

Steven licked his lips, noticing for the first time how dry they were. He smiled a little. “I think I'm gonna be okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written because I have a deep and abiding love for Spinel, and I wish the show had given her more of a chance to help Steven recover.
> 
> Thanks to my friends Ross and [happy_mystic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/happy_mystic) for the editing help!


End file.
